For years, career ladders defined how people approach their progress in their chosen line of work.
Using the metaphor of a ladder, the concept proposes that people start their careers at the bottom and move upward, one rung at a time. Many organizations define the rungs with job titles and suggest time frames for advancing among rungs. For example, consider the potential career ladder for a new retail sales associate:
Start as a sales associate in a store. Move up to assistant manager within one year and store manager within another two years. Two years later, move into an assistant regional manager position. Three years after that, transfer to a headquarters job to gain broader business experience. After several years, move back to the field as a regional manager. Either move directly into a district management position or move back to headquarters for another position during the next three years. If labelled high potential, there might be a chance later to move into director and other executive roles, which could last longer than three years.
Note the use of very specific job titles and defined time frames. Note, too, that the time frames on the lower rungs of the ladder are shorter than those associated with the higher rungs to offer a sense of momentum early on. The typical career length is approximately 30 years.
Popular career guidance aligned with career ladders suggests that a person should stay in their first job for two years and that one should be making a vertical or lateral move every three years, or they’ve hit a dead end.
However, changes in the labour market in the past several decades have upended the concept of career ladders for many workers. Among the main ones: 1.) career-long employment with a single organization is increasingly rare and 2.) careers last longer: 40, 50 years and more.
In response, the well-defined career ladder has given way to more flexible career frameworks. Career frameworks define a range of job roles within a particular job or occupational family and the relationship among those roles (some are lateral, others are fall into a hierarchy). The following figure shows the differences between career ladders and career frameworks.
| Career Ladders | Career Frameworks |
| Emphasizes moving through a progression of rungs | Emphasis on remaining employable by experiencing a variety of positions |
| Emphasis on a single job skill | Emphasis on a group of related skills |
| Seniority matters in advancement | Skills and experience matter |
| Primarily focuses on upskilling | Focuses on up- and reskilling |
| Assumes the person will remain in a particular job throughout a career | Suggests that a person can work in one family of occupations throughout a career but also prepares workers to move into other occupations if needed |
Adapting to career frameworks
Many of the moves in a career framework are seemingly lateral rather than vertical but provide opportunities to grow professionally through developing new skills, working with new technologies, expanding the scope of influence, or receiving mentorship.
For example, e-commerce has upended the career ladder for the retail sales associate. Someone in retail might move among roles in brick-and-mortar stores and fulfillment centres, among different types of retailers such as clothing retailers and general merchants, and among individual contributor, co-ordinator and management roles. When moving among positions, the individual might seek experience with emerging categories of retail or ones that offer particular types of customers, retail technologies and types of management experience.
Of course, the career framework model can work across many different industries. The figure below shows the many different career pathways available to a person working in engineering.
| Career Framework (like a BINGO board) | ||
| Regional Trainer – Store Operations (Employer D) |
Training Manager (Employer E, years) |
Training and Store Consultant (Self-Employed) |
| Store Manager (Employer A (return) |
Stay employable | Project manager, OmniChannel distribution (Employer D) |
| Store Associate (Employer A) |
Customer Service Representative (Employer B) |
Team Lead, Customer Service (Employer C) |
As part of maintaining their career framework, workers need to upskill (update competencies within the context of their current job family) and reskill (develop competencies in different types of work). When reskilling, career frameworks encourage workers to leverage existing competencies by moving into adjacent work (jobs that have a relationship to the original line job).
With their emphasis on flexibility, movement among roles and employers (including stints in contingent employment), and on gaining skills and experience, career frameworks provide workers with a realistic way to conceptualize their careers and growth.
